class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[ix]"/> rest. In December, 1917, the gunners came out of the line for the first time, and hardly knew themselves!

January, 1918, saw the Division back in the line again in a comparatively peaceful sector with, however, as always, one bad spot—Bailleul, through which one never loitered.

But peaceful bits of the line were not the lot of the 62nd Divisional Artillery for long, and in March we were hurried down to Bucquoy. Here was no line, peaceful or otherwise, no prepared positions to take over, but the hurly-burly of battle, and positions to be chosen where they could be found. But what splendid targets!

After the battle came a period of holding the line again, in, I think, the most unpleasant sector we occupied, of which Essarts was the most unhealthy spot.

Then came a change. A quick train journey to the South and a rush into battle without time for proper reconnaissance, but with the willing and ready help of French and Italian comrades.

A quick change also to open warfare, and fighting in dense woods! But these variations affected not at all the Divisional Artillery except in so far as it stimulated the interest of officers and men.

The fighting in the Ardre Valley was indeed an experience we shall all look back upon with pride and with pleasure.

It was in the thick woods bordering the main road from Epernay to Rheims that the D.A.C. lost their show team of roans who fell victims to a bomb in that much bombed area. I can see now the distress on Fraser's face when he told me of the casualty. There were many other gallant four-footed friends who paid the toll of war there. If "the men both good and wise" are right we may yet hope "to give them joyous greeting when we pass the Golden Gate."

And so we come to the return journey, back again to the 4th Army Corps. I am glad to say my own especial pets, a very handsome pair of blacks in "A" Battery 310 Brigade, survived the bombs, and before long another battle and the beginning of the glorious end.

Indeed, had we but realised it at the time, the beginning had come, and we had participated in it, one of the only four British Divisions which had had the luck of that honour.

It was shortly after our return from Rheims that I left the 62nd Division for the 9th Army Corps, so I cannot speak from actual experience of the thrilling excitement and glorious successes which the Division achieved in the 2nd taking of Havrincourt, and in the other great battles which brought this long war to a triumphant conclusion. (I left just after the York and Lancasters made that thrilling bayonet charge in company with the King's Company of the Grenadier Guards on the heights near Mory.)

But the story of these culminating triumphs is told in the pages of this book, and it only remains for me to offer one or two remarks.

Three things, among others, seem to me to be especially worthy of note: the endurance of the personnel, the youth of the officers in command of batteries, the efficiency of the Territorial gunner and driver.

How often do we see the phrase, "The Infantry were withdrawn for a rest, the Artillery remaining, as usual, in the line covering the —th Division."

The periodical reliefs of Divisions hardly affected the gunner at all. It was a marvel to me how the various Divisional Artilleries managed to "stick it out." A day or two in the wagon lines now and then seemed all that was necessary to restore officers and men to full vigour and activity again. It was a triumph of endurance.

As the war progressed battery commanders became younger and younger. I remember once congratulating an officer on gaining command of a six-gun battery—he had just "put up" his crowns—and making some remark on his age, to be met with the retort, "I'm not so very young, Sir, I'm nearly 21."

I wonder what would have been thought of the prophet who, in 1913, had predicted that batteries would be commanded in the greatest of all wars by men of "nearly 21"!

I well remember, some years before the war, when the Territorial Force was first evolved, the utter scepticism expressed of the Territorial ever being able to be made into a gunner. Infantry yes, but gunners—! And a distinguished Colonel Commandant R.A., of the old school, told me, during 1916, that Territorial Force gunners might be all right during trench warfare, but that it was absurd to think that Territorial Force drivers would ever be able to bring the guns into position in a war of movement. The advance of the batteries to Graincourt at the Battle of Cambrai, the changes of position on the Ardre, and 100 other instances prove the fallacy of such gloomy prognostications.

Properly trained and instructed—and the 62nd Divisional Artillery was that—Territorial Force gunners and drivers proved themselves equal to all tasks set them. Higher praise it is impossible to bestow.

In the concluding paragraph of his book, Colonel Anderson writes of "the brotherhood of officers and men" and of "steadfast and loyal comradeship."

It was these virtues fostered and encouraged by men like the writer of this book, David Sherlock, Bedwell, Gadie, Woodcock, Lindsell, FitzGibbon, and many others, which enabled the 62nd Divisional Artillery to triumph over all obstacles, to achieve its deeds of valour, and to gain its brilliant successes for the glory of England and to the eternal honour of Yorkshiremen.

February 7th, 1920.

Chapter I
THE FIRST ADVANCE

On the 23rd December, 1916, the 62nd Division received orders to embark for France. The artillery, which was billeted in Northampton, was conveyed from Southampton to Havre on the 6th and 7th January, 1917, and thence railed to the concentration area at and around Wavans, near Auxi-le-Chateau. The weather was of the worst type that January can give, alternate frost and thaw and bitterly cold, and we began to experience at once the distressing conditions of mud and slush, which were to be so normal a feature in this and the two following winters in France and Belgium.

On the 17th January the 310th and 312th Brigades sent off one section per battery by motor lorry to be attached to the 19th Division, then in the firing line, for training preliminary to taking over finally their part of the line. It was a snowy, uncomfortable sort of day, and the lorries were, as so often happened, late in arriving, with the result that the detachments did not get started on their journey till about 3 p.m., and arrived at their destination after dark. Sections from the 311th Brigade followed the next day.

On the 23rd the Divisional Artillery marched to Auteuil and Amplieu, and remained in billets there for the next few days, the headquarters being at Bus-les-Artois. The first gunner casualty took place on the 24th, a gunner of the 312th Brigade being wounded on that day while attached to the 19th Division.

The next few days were spent by the Staffs of Headquarters and Brigades in inspecting the positions to be occupied by batteries in the neighbourhood of Courcelles, Mailly-mailly, Colincamps, and Engelbelmer, and in reconnoitring the observation posts on the high